"The boy was in virtual reality with me. After the town meeting, I took him and his parents into the basketball coach's office — just the four of us. His mother is in Filatov's virtual-reality section, and it turns out she'd taken one of the clunky old VR helmets home and wired it up for the boy to play games. The kid had hacked his way onto the main computer's world model and was going out exploring at night. Probably peeping in people's windows, things like that. With that helmet and a simple game joystick, he'd head out through his bedroom window. That led straight down into the grocery store's parking lot."
"How'd you get him to admit all that?"
"I didn't have to, really. I'd seen him in the parking lot — or at least a cartoonish picture of him carrying a ray gun. The computer represented his presence by an 'avatar'—an image chosen by the boy. It looked like a character from a game we're working on in new-product development—'Space Invaders.'"
"I don't get it," Laura said. "He used a game program and that hardware to hack his way into the computer's world model?"
Gray nodded.
"On the Other's side of the partition?" Again a nod.
"And you met by accident there in virtual reality?"
Gray nodded a third time. "He could see me, and I could see him, just like you and I could see each other when we went for our walk through the computer center only at a distance. It didn't matter what equipment we used to get there. We were both in the same world. We were both in the computer's head — in cyberspace."
Gray's eyes drifted off. "After I saw the boy, I ran off toward the sound of the screams. By getting down low — in a crouch — you can really get the treadmill moving and go fast. I found them easily. The thermal trail left by the man's body heat looked… phosphorescent."
"You found who? The soldier?"
"And a Model Eight. I ran right up to them. The soldier was exhausted and drooping. He was being carried by the robot. I was invisible to him, in a virtual world that the soldier couldn't see. But the Model Eight saw me. It looked right at me."
"But wait! The Model Eight was real, right? He was there in the real world."
"Yes, but his mind was in the virtual model. It was dark. The robot was out where it shouldn't be and maybe hadn't ever been before. It had an open socket right into the same model I was plugged into, and when I came up he saw me immediately. I thought for a second he'd drop the soldier, but he didn't. He took off running — heading straight into the swamp and carrying the screaming man with him."
Everything Gray was saying swirled in Laura's head. She couldn't force herself to think straight, and she gave up — settling back to let Gray's story sweep her along.
"I followed them into the jungle. It's like running through a generic jungle repeated over and over. I had to go on the sounds of breaking branches and the man's shouts up ahead. When the robot stopped, it did what we call a refresh scan. It gathered data about its immediate surroundings through its own sensors and then uploaded that data to the main computer. When I caught up with them" — he looked up in pain—"the place where we found the body was completely scanned. It was an accurate picture of… everything. The soldier was lying on the ground."
"Was he still alive?"
Gray nodded, then took a deep breath and went on. "I had no way of communicating with the robot, so I positioned myself between it and the soldier. The Model Eight was standing down in the water. It must have learned how not to make tracks. It made a wide circle around the whole area to try to get to the man and I tried to scare it off as best I could."
"What does that mean? How could you scare the robot?"
"It didn't know I wasn't real. It saw me waving my arms like a madman and didn't know what I was. The only problem was that I wasn't strong or big enough. What it saw and thought was that there was a six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound human trying to keep it from its toy. It wasn't enough. Maybe if I'd had time to reprogram the computer to give me a different representation." He heaved another deep sigh. "So, it grabbed the soldier. That's when it happened." Gray fell silent.
"What? Joseph, listen. You weren't even there, no matter what you think about cyberspace."
Gray ignored Laura's remark and pressed on. "I pretended to grab onto the soldier's legs. The robot saw me do it. The whole point of me doing it was for the robot to see that I wouldn't let him take the soldier off. You're right that I wasn't there in the real world, but the distinction is meaningless. My actions had consequences. The robot reacted to them. And I should've known!" he burst out, slamming his fist onto the table.
Laura jumped with a start at the sound. "Known what?" she asked softly, frightened by the tortured look on his face.
"I don't know how many tactile room sessions I've watched — a hundred, two hundred. I should've known! The juveniles are possessive. You can't try to take their favorite toy away!" He shook his head. "The Model Eight had been dragging the soldier by his head, Laura, by his head. When I grabbed the soldier's legs, the robot paused, gathering itself. I saw it coming and even let go, but…"
Gray covered his face with his hands, then rubbed his eyes and temples. "The soldier's feet slung around like a rag doll. The body landed on the raised muddy clearing. The robot still held the man's head in his hands."
Gray fell silent — reliving the ghastly scene, Laura imagined, in the vivid color images of his mind. "What happened then?" she asked.
"The robot was distraught. It started waggling its head from side to side and stamping its feet like it was marching in place. The head it was holding seemed too awful either to put down or to hold onto. Finally, it tossed the head toward the body and disappeared."
Laura felt vicariously the weight that was crushing Gray.
"Joseph, that wasn't your fault. You didn't kill that man."
"I built the robot," he said, holding Laura's gaze. She had no ready reply. "I don't want you going out by yourself anymore. It's not safe."
"What's not safe?"
"This whole island's not safe. Look at you!"
"I'll be okay."
"It's not safe, Laura."
She tucked her chin to her chest and allowed the narcotic calm of her medication to wash over her. After a few moments of silence, she asked, "Was the robot in the jungle the one they call Auguste?"
Gray's face rose to meet hers. "Yes."
"But they all look alike. How could you tell which one it was?"
Gray looked down at his clasped hands. "Hightop told me it was Auguste, and that he would be punished."
Laura suddenly felt exhausted. She slumped into her chair, laid her head on the padded seat back, and looked up at the ceiling. She let her eyes close. The codeine made everything seem all right and she was too tired to give Gray much more comfort.
"I cabled up to Hightop in the Model Eight facility," Gray went on in the quiet voice of a confession. "No microwave transmissions, no computer interface, just a cable between my notebook and Hightop. He didn't want to tell me. They're emulating my penchant for privacy with a vengeance. But he finally admitted they've been getting out of the yard. All of them, not just a few bad seeds like Auguste. The jungle canopy is thick and runs right up the hillside to the yard. The jungle has been their little playground — the place where they could break the rules and rebel. Apparently, they hate being watched, and we watch them constantly."
Laura opened her eyes and looked over at him. "Everything is happening so fast. It's… unpredictable. The Model Eights aren't just bright, they're brilliant, but in a… primitive way. And some are apparently excellent programmers. They developed a virtual patch that tricked the computer into accepting reruns of old observation recordings so that it looked like they were in the facility all night."